Kura Yangu Sauti Yangu disputes IEBC figures

AfriCOG Executive Director Gladwell Otieno. Photo: David Njaaga, Standard 

A coalition of civil societies Thursday pointed out huge variations in the results of last week's elections.

The Kura Yangu Sauti Yangu Initiative noted that the declaration of the presidential election results revealed major contradictions and anomalies between figures appearing on the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission's (IEBC) website and those announced by IEBC chairman Wafula Chabukati on Friday.

International Commission of Jurists, Kenyan Chapter Executive Director Samuel Mohochi said there were glaring differences between results announced in the presidential election at county level and from constituencies in those counties.

"For example, in Kisumu, valid votes total 378,903 in the county against 439,423 from the constituencies, showing a deduction of 60,520 votes," said Mr Mohochi during a press briefing at the Kenya Human Rights offices Thursday.

"Similarly, the valid votes in Kericho were announced as 294,215 against 303,470 votes on the portal, repressing a loss of 9,255 votes," he added.

Another concern raised was a contradiction in the number of rejected votes on the IEBC portal against the forms 34A already analysed by the coalition.

"Although IEBC did not announce the number of rejected votes, the screen streaming results showed 401,903 rejected votes, even though a sum of the county totals was 400,796 while summing up constituency rejected votes on the portal yields 401,943."

He also pointed out that rejected votes in 288 constituencies did not match details in Form 34B, while there were no grand totals for rejected voted in 25 constituencies. 

The coalition also claimed that the voter turnout exceeded the number of registered voters in four polling stations in the range of 129 per cent to 182 per cent among other concerns.

Mohochi questioning the legitimacy of the declared results given the amount of missing data a week after the elections and said the differences were too huge to be ignored.

“At face value, they suggest a full audit of the results the IEBC has released and their reconciliations with authentic documents from the polling stations,” he said.

AfriCOG Executive Director Gladwell Otieno said the data they have so far was from their 500 monitors they had deployed during the elections and pictorials, videos and written information from the public.

They have also assessed some of the Forms 34B uploaded by the IEBC for purposes of tallying with the results released by the commission.

The coalition will also be keenly following a petition at the Supreme Court to be filed by National Super Alliance who claim the elections were stolen to favor President Uhuru Kenyatta.